Tag: owned

Imagine dropping $120 for some Jerry Seinfelds

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

SI: New Balance releases the 950s, featuring Cooper Flagg as their figurehead; retailing at $120

Initially, I wanted to write about how such a retail price is contrary to the supposed quote by reigning NBA Rookie of the Year, Cooper Flagg, where he stated that he wanted his first signature shoes to be priced at $35, so that all kids could afford them, but there’s a lot of claim that such quote was bogus, and so I don’t want to risk looking like an incorrect asshole, so I’ll disclaim the ambiguity of the quote.

However, if he did say something along those effects, and New Balance still said naaaahhhh, here’s your shoe, and we’re going to sell it for $120, then egg on Cooper Flagg for allowing it to stand, but let’s be real here, high integrity isn’t necessarily something basketball fans expect from those dudes who went to Duke.

I mean in all fairness, $120 isn’t a horrible price, considering the fact that just about any signature released by Nike or the Jordan sub-brand usually starts at like $200 and goes only up, and often time results in a couple of fatalities throughout the nation as overzealous sneakerheads resort to violence over some fucking sneakers.  But $120 is still a price point where the purported youngsters that Cooper Flagg had in mind probably still can’t afford, which then kind of defeats the purpose for that price point in the first place.

Especially when, when the day is over, the 950s are basically New Balance-branded knockoffs of Nike Air Force Ones, in that they’re all-white sneakers that look like Jerry Seinfeld would wear on the set of Seinfeld.  And then the question becomes, why the fuck would anyone pay $120 for bootleg AF1s when, if you play your cards right, you can get the OG AF1s for less than that.

Either way, I know that they dropped almost a month ago, but I’m just finding out about them now, and just about everything about this whole release seems like kind of a flop.  They’re overpriced clones, look like dorky Forrest Gump shoes, and if Flagg actually had claimed he wanted his shoes to be cheaper, then they failed there too.

But really, what really made this post into reality was the want to photoshop together imagery of Flagg with Jerry Seinfeld, united in their dorky all-whites joints.

Just stfu and play ball, Mookie

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

SI: All-Star Mookie Betts wants MLB to basically implement a mercy rule and avoid position players pitching

One of the tiniest consolations of watching a baseball game where the score gets out of hand, is the off-chance of getting to see a position player come into the game and pitch.  If cheering for the team that’s up by a margin that warrants the entry of a position player, it’s kind of a fun, rubbing-it-in kind of mentality that they’re clobbering the opponent so bad that this is happening.  And if cheering for the team that’s getting clobbered, it’s the moment where the white flag has been raised, and hopefully they can relax a little bit and enjoy the entertainment of seeing a guy more than likely loft some meatballs to the plate, but occasionally make some surprising highlights.

Frankly, some of the more memorable highlights that I can recall easily in spite of being a shitty baseball fan, come from position player pitching:

Every one of these plate appearances I could recall off the top of my head without any thinking necessary.  That’s the beauty of position player pitching, it’s low risk, low stakes, high chance of fun, high chance of making positive memories.

And Mookie Betts wants it all to go away.

A man who has won four World Series, an MVP award, and is making $20 million dollars this year, $170 million in his career, with about $120 million waiting for him in deferred pay, all for playing a children’s game, somehow wants to play less baseball, even if it it’s just removing one of the more rare scenarios, and removing position player pitching and basically having a mercy rule instead.

Yeah, that’s never going to happen because of things called television deals, advertising rights, time to move concessions and merchandise, greedy owners getting their money’s worth out of their indentured servants, but (what should be) most importantly, fans getting the product that they volunteered to get when they decided to invest their time in a baseball game.

But fuck you anyway for even suggesting such a selfish, poor-optics and tone-deaf idea, because it’s not like having the opportunity to hack away at pitches from dudes who haven’t seriously pitched since they were teenagers is truly ruining your life.

Despite the fact that he players for the Dodgers, I generally have no qualm with Mookie Betts.  He seems like a decent guy, likes bowling, always shown to be real chill, one of my favorite authors adores the man.  But this absurd suggestion coming from him creeps him into Anthony Rendon-territory of coming off as selfish and greedy, wanting to even suggest reducing the amount of baseball he has to play despite making multi-generational wealth playing it.  I don’t, really agree with the notion that everyone gets an opinion on the matter, especially when the one trying to make it is a guy who makes absurd amounts of money playing baseball. 

This is where I’d say, how hard is it to take an at-bat against a guy probably throwing no harder than 60 mph, but apparently Mookie has but only one plate appearance against a position player, this season, against the Pirates’ Tyler Callihan; where he flew out to center.  So I guess his salt at not being able to basically get a free home run or base hit, and denting his batting stats by a ten-thousandth of a point entitles him to suggest implementing a mercy rule for everyone, got it.

In this regard, Mookie can go fuck himself.  Position player pitching should remain indefinitely, and it wouldn’t matter if it were Mookie Betts suggesting this, his douchebag teammate Dalton Rushing, or even someone I enjoyed like Freddie Freeman, Martin Prado, Chipper Jones, Jonny Venters, David DeJesus or Cal Ripken, Jr., my reaction would be the same, fuck off and stop acting like an overpaid man-child and take your at-bats against the backup catcher or veteran all-star just wanting to have some fun.  It’s the one of the only consolations of a lopsided game, and often times a reminder that baseball is supposed to be fun.

Finally, some #TRYHARD answers

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

ABC7 Chicago: Gary, Indiana teen with “perfect 4.0 GPA” accepted into 126 colleges, amassing $9M in cumulative scholarship offers

Gary, Indiana must’ve never heard about Westlake High, because 126/$9M seems kind of mid in the grand spectrum of the #TRYHARD game.  Also, I put perfect 4.0 GPA in quotes above, because not long after discovering the Florida nerd with the 11.99 GPA, the whole concept of grade point averages has been blown out the door, and every number warrants questioning and examinations that nobody wants to have to do and it sucks to be a egghead teenager today in that regard.

Anyway, not that I really wanted to get back in the swing of documenting teen #TRYHARDs left and right like I did that one year, this particular story came of interest to me for one specific reason: it appears to have shed a little light on the whole #TRYHARD game, namely potentially answering one of the biggest questions I had about the game as a whole itself: how are all these kids able to apply to so many colleges without seemingly having to worry about those pesky things called, application fees?

Apparently, there’s a site/service, CommonApp, where there are 1,100 schools on the platform, so it’s apparently easy to make a profile and fling it out like Gambit to any and all schools available; many of which seemingly have no, or are willing to waive, those pesky application fees.  I don’t care to dig into just which schools are on the platform, but imma guess many notable and nameworthy ones, based on the cache of schools that have been mentioned by #TRYHARDs throughout the years.

Welp, that answers a lot of questions I’ve always had in regard to how these #TRYHARDs are applying to hundreds of schools.

Anyway, before I wrap on this post, a few things I want to clown on:

[They had] a perfect 4.0 grade point average and is ranked second in [their] class.

Second?  If they’re ranked second in the class, what does first place look like?  And why aren’t they making the news?

[They] did have to write about 30 essays to go with some of the applications. But [they] says it was worth it.

30 essays?  Oh the humanity!  Oh the strain, the labor, the exhausting ordeal!  Lmao, I could knock out 30 essays in a day, but then again, there’s nobody I know who has been writing as much and as long as I have, and even Jerry Seinfeld probably has taken more breaks than I have.  But if 30 essays was the cost for not having to pay application fees, I would’ve written 100 to not have had to pay for the 3 colleges I paid to apply to.

And in true #TRYHARD fashion, I can’t seem to find any intel on where they actually picked.  This article originally dropped in March, and decision day was back in May, but no information on where they ultimately chose, which goes to show that once the initial news of #TRYHARDing breaks, frankly nobody cares what happens afterward.

The ultimate high school #TRYHARD?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

NYP: Florida teen graduates high school with a mind-bending 11.99 GPA; prompts district to reexamine policy

Man, I thought I was a big deal when I was rocking a 3.8 GPA my senior year.  Meanwhile, this ubernerd is taking 44 AP classes, and college courses, completing their associate’s degree before finishing up high school, and I guess solved the meme-like riddle of how people can accumulate four years experience for entry level jobs.

Seriously though, when I was in high school, the defining standard of excellence was how close to a 4.0 GPA one could get to.  And in only the rarest of instances, you’d see kids nail that 4.0 or even exceed it by like 0.1 or 0.2 because of the two AP courses they took their senior year, and then they’re the class valedictorian.

But over the #SZNs of watching #TRYHARDs race across America at who can outdo others, we’ve witnessed ultra-competitive #TRYHARD students start notching GPAs that have crossed into the 5’s and even 7’s, en route to them being accepted into 162 colleges with accumulated scholarship offers eclipsing multiple millions of dollars.

And then we have this mensch down in Florida who attended George Steinbrenner High,* who somehow manages to get an astounding 11.99 GPA, and obviously the first question that comes to the minds of most rational observers, other than what a huge fuckin’ nerd, is, hoowwwwww???

*there’s a joke somewhere about how there’s actually a school named after the former, free-spending wheeling & dealing owner of the Yankees but I can’t figure one out

Don’t get me wrong, as obnoxious as the self-promotion and humble-bragging can get, I’m all for kids getting competitive over academics, as opposed to dumb TikTok trends or petty larcenies, because at least these brats might be learning some useful knowledge in their journeys, but hopefully they’re doing it because they want to be smarter, and not because it’s a route for internet notoriety.

Because as impressive as the feat was, I question the motivation behind it if the goal was merely to surpass the #TRYHARDs before them:

noting that [their] top aims were to “become valedictorian” and “break the state GPA record.” 

It’s worth mentioning that the Florida state GPA record before this kid was 11.84, so it’s not like this kid had broken into completely uncharted territory.  The academic policy was already busted, allowing kids to take questionably high and probably ethically risky course loads at young ages, it’s just that it’s now coming into question because it probably didn’t have the magnitude of spotlight on it previously.

But it does make me wonder if the kid really had the thirst for knowledge to take such a demanding course load, or if it was the equivalent of figuring out what he had to take in order to hit the XBOX achievement, and then going for solely that.

Considering the fact that they’re going to Duke, there’s always the innate possibility that the latter is very much in play.

The funny thing is, one of my knee-jerk reactions to the story was after picking up my jaw after seeing 11.99, was the obvious joke that although everyone might think it’s astounding at first to see such a high GPA, their minority (obviously) parents were probably completely unsold on it, and wondered why they didn’t get a full 12.0 GPA instead.  Like, what careless error on their quantum physics scantron did they get wrong that dropped them down to 11.99 and cost them the chance for immortality of 12?

Moving onto the proposed overhaul of school policy, #TRYHARD’s county realized the absurdity of someone being able to get such an astronomical GPA, and although they’re impressed, it sounds like they want to change things to where such shouldn’t be possible again; unsurprisingly, the nerd who just set the bar is all for overhaul, because it would effectively lock their GPA into immortality and basically prevent anyone in history from ever challenging it.  It’s like when a heel wrestler aspires to win a championship blet, so they can retire it and be the last guy in history books to hold it.

Either way, the question remains where this kid lands in the annals of #TRYHARDs.  The GPA and course load were of couse legendary, but without any background of how many colleges they applied to, how many they were accepted into, and how much scholarship offer money they amassed, we’ll never truly know.  But perhaps that’s the point, and much like they’re trying to slam the door on any future challengers to their record, by not disclosing the base counting #TRYHARD stats, we’ll never know where they stand in the rankings of ultimate #TRYHARDs.

Big-brain, 11.99 GPA logic.

Revisionist history is fun not

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know why I get set off so easily by news from the airline industry.  Maybe it’s because I’m constantly frustrated by the endlessly elevating cost of travel, compounded by all of the traveling I wish I’ve done that I struggle to try and make reality.  Maybe it’s because the industry is so full of bullshit that’s so easy to sniff out, where companies are getting richer by the second while consumers have long been left in the dust at being able to keep up with rising costs.  Maybe it’s because of years of having flight privileges and then not has me with some resentful shell shock at what it costs for the rest of the world to travel and it manifests as vitriol toward in the industry.

Maybe it’s just all of the above to varying degrees.

Anyway, I read this article about how airline travel costs aren’t coming down in spite of the plunging costs of jet fuel, and this is one of those situations where an explanation isn’t needed at all; most of us in the world know and accept that the airline industry is just a bunch of greedy fucks who will continue to increase and increase costs and that going backward is absolutely not an option.  But an explanation is given, courtesy of Delta’s CEO Ed Bastian, and naturally all it does is incite anger and frustration to anyone like me, stupid enough to read it.

However, the worst part is that from the time I originally read it, to the time I’m taking the time to write about it, the original post as well as all links, feeds and summaries about the original post have all been since edited, to make Bastian look like not quite the disgusting money-grubbing corporate asshole, because there was a quote originally that basically blamed the rich for why fares will indefinitely remain high, because the affluent don’t want to run the risk of the poors getting on their hallowed Delta jets.

It really was a sight to behold, a masterclass of white man CEO-ing, where Bastian completely dodged accountability, threw his richest customers under a speeding bus, acknowledged the class disparity in the world by also blaming the poors for existing, all while not even trying to stop spinning bullshit about the dollars and cents that make Delta and all the other airlines are grubbing for with every ounce of energy they have.

Revisionist history truly is an incredible thing.  Clearly, smarter people than Bastian quickly realized the disgusting horror of his original words and cashed in a whole lot of favors for them to be able to scrub the entire fucking internet so quickly to revise his words to not necessarily stop blaming the rich, but to soften the accusations that the poors are why the rich are the reason why fares remain high.

The funniest (ironically) thing about this whole thing is that it was wholly unnecessary for Bastian or any CEO to even pipe up about this whole thing.  It’s one of those things most people already know and have begrudgingly accepted the fact that airline costs will never, ever, ever come down because the industry, much like all other corporations, really like money, and when they get used to seeing how much of it comes in on account of a hike, they would rather eat their young before bringing it back down, regardless of if the reason for the increase swings back downward or goes away outright.

Not only did anyone not have to say anything about this, no airline really even has to do anything in order to try and placate airline travelers.  Like, Delta tries to justify keeping their airfare costs astronomical by introducing the most minimal of perks, like a discount or reduction of bag fees, or a tweak to boarding process – but only for those in first or business class, and possibly the less pleeb-ey pleebs in economy plus.  With absolutely zero consideration for the economy and Spirit basic class, whose nickels and dimes are the real reason why the company makes a gozillion dollars a year.

Yeah, Delta doesn’t even have to do that, because the whole airline industry is full of collusion, and if all carriers agree to the same uniform set of draconian in-flight privileges, then nobody is required to deviate from the status quo.  In fact, the fact that Delta is doing such is only going to piss off the people operating United, American and any of the other carriers that will most likely have to tweak their operations in order to fight for the five passengers per flight who are fickle enough to pick one over the other on account of such trite perks.

And then of course, these too will disappear in the future, regurgitating and recycling the droll state of airline traveling for consumers, and then the whole thing will restart itself in 12-18 months, but with fares another $40 higher across the board.  Because of inflation, fuel costs, too many poors getting on, etc.

God bless ‘Murica

Wonder what the Mormon faith feels about enabling, Bryce?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Philadelphia Inquirer: video emerges of MLB star Bryce Harper giving personalized message to FanDuel gambling addict, with implications that it was done so to continue to encourage gambler to keep pissing away money

Personally, I enjoy gambling despite the fact that I don’t do it nearly as much as I did when I was in my twenties.  Obviously, I am an enthusiast of sports as well, seeing as how a good 40-50% of my brog’s content is usually related to sports, or at least is full of sports analogies, flexing the encyclopedic wealth of sports knowledge I like to believe I have.

However, gambling on sports, is something that I don’t do.

Because I have never won a sports bet in my entire life.

Like really, I can trace it all back to the three times in which I’ve bet actual money on sports, with all three ending up with L’s:

  • In 1996, I bet a classmate, ice cream (35¢), that the Pittsburgh Steelers would defeat the Dallas Cowboys in Super Bowl XXX. Honestly, this was a reckless bet that only a 5th grader would be capable of making, seeing as how my NFL knowledge was nowhere as comprehensive as my NBA knowledge, and I was just mostly just being a contrarian and banking on the fact that there was no way the Cowboys would win a third Super Bowl in four years.  I was wrong
  • In 2006, I bet ($50) on I think, BoDog, that the Washington Redskins would defeat the Seattle Seahawks in the divisional round of the playoffs. The Redskins were surging, powered by their white-on-white jersey combo, coming off of a big wild-card weekend win against the Buccaneers.  Furthermore, Seattle RB Shaun Alexander was out with a concussion, and I thought the Seachickens were ripe to be upset by a Redskins team with momentum.  I was wrong
  • In 2008, I bet ($20) in Las Vegas, that the Tampa Bay Rays would beat the Boston Red Sox in game 5 of the ALCS. Scott Kazmir was starting and he was an absolute Red Sox killer, and to his credit, he did hold Boston to 2 hits, 0 runs in six innings, but between the 7th, 8th and 9th innings, the Tampa Bay bullpen imploded, allowing 8 runs, including a walk-off hit in the 9th that proved me wrong and made me vow to not bet on sports anymore because what could be more emblematic of such a message than a playoff team blowing a 7-0 lead in three innings.  Humorously, I had seen that there was a bet for a five-inning official game wager, and had I done that one, I would’ve won, but the potential to win a whole $5 moar dollars led me to the full nine-inning bet instead, and look where that got me.

The point is, I’m no stranger to gambling, but gambling on sports is just something I don’t do.  I’m fortunate that in spite of the competitive nature I can sometimes exhibit, I (hopefully) don’t have that facet of my brain that snaps and goes off the deep end when it comes to gambling and I’ve always been able to restrain myself from making any dives into oblivion when it comes to the pitfall of one more time that unfortunately befalls many others.

Like this poor dude in the article who has wagered over $18M* through FanDuel betting, and has lost $2M over the last 5-6 years, which doesn’t sound that bad as far as the ratio of what he’s bet versus what he’s lost, but considering he’s lost his house and contemplated suicide, there’s a lot of murky details in the dark water that would really help if were made clearer.

*unclear in the scope of the story of how much of this $18M is actual money and not promotional or bonus funds because it does matter in the grand spectrum and could be misleading if left unclear

The last thing I’d want is to miss paying any sort of bill because of gambling, much less my mortgage, to the frequency in which I fall into foreclosure and ultimately lose my family’s home.  This is a stark reminder of the potentially fatal consequences of gambling addiction, and I’m always astonished at how most everyone knows this, but we’re still in the present reality where it’s very much not just a meme:

Welcome back to SportsCenter presented by ESPN Bet, for more on the Ohtani situation we go to our FanDuel MLB Insider Jeff Passan at our DraftKings Studio in Los Angeles brought to you by Caesar’s Sportsbook

The crazy horrific variable about this whole story is the involvement of an actual, high-profile, top-tier professional athlete in Bryce Harper, where the high-level narrative that is perceived is that he made a personalized video at the encouragement of FanDuel, to passively encourage this addict to continue gambling, because he’s getting a very special incentive because of his spend history.

There is absolutely zero manner in which this is not a horrible look for FanDuel, for MLB, for the Philadelphia Phillies, and especially for Bryce Harper, on several levels, including one that I’d like to isolate being, his supposedly devout Mormon faith.

Yes, I think all religions are full of shit, and Mormonism is probably no exception when it comes to gray areas and loose interpretations, but the Church of LDS supposedly is opposed to all forms of gambling, so it’s really weird and unnerving that a Mormon like Bryce Harper that has the influence (money, status) to get married at one of their sacred castles, is basically an accomplice to enabling a gambler to continue to ruin the lives of himself and his family, and there’s nothing that can be done or said at this amount of evidence where anyone comes out looking good from it.

It’s like, because Harper himself is not doing the actual gambling, it’ll be swept under the rug as something harmless, and that he and his faith are not responsible for those who do, and that there’s no explicit rule against enabling, which is precisely what he is doing and what the intention of the video was meant to do.

Also, want to iso this, because wtf:

your host Bryttanni at FanDuel

I mean we’ve all seen some truly Mr. Garvey names in our lives these days, but this one actually manages to stand out.

I’m really curious to see how this pans out, or if Harper, the Phillies and MLB are just going to keep their lips zipped, and hope for it to go away, especially when the inevitable strike and lockout is going to take place in the winter because all the owners and all the players are a bunch of greedy fucks and I’m inclined to blow the whole sport out of existence in spite of how much I love the game, just because it doesn’t seem like there’s going to be any other way to eradicate the greed and corruption otherwise.

But at least Harper, and anyone else entwined with FanDuel or any other gambling racket will have a way to make some coin on the side when next season is cancelled due to work stoppage, and I’m sure no more degenerate gamblers are going to suffer and possibly die in the process.

What I wouldn’t do to be this Korean guy

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Source: Korean YouTuber confronts Japanese “bumper” after witnessing him bump numerous women, including his friend

When I was in Seoul, I definitely got turned off by the oppressive volume of tourists that happened to be in the city at the same time in which I was visiting on more than one occasion.  I’d be lying if I didn’t fantasize about standing my ground while walking around and just trucking the shit out of everyone, primarily those who were eyes down, glued to their phones, to teach them a lesson to be more mindful of their surroundings.

But I didn’t, because I’m a civilized person, and even the most obnoxious of human behaviors are not worth potentially causing more than minor bodily harm, no matter how gratifying it might be to vent out my frustrations with human congestion.

My general rule is that when in tighter quarters, I will give people around 45 degrees of bodily rotation when wanting to go around them, and expect around 45 degrees back from them, so that we can hopefully traverse around one another as seamlessly as possible.  If they are not willing to reciprocate to the degree I do, well then fuck them, they can maybe get a little bit of body by virtue of their rudeness.

That being said, this was about one of the most satisfying pieces of internet content that I’ve seen in a long time, and it definitely gave me that e-chub of approval and envy that I wished I were the Korean guy in this video.

But apparently, and I’ve read/seen things about this phenomenon, about how there are a lot of Japanese people who are completely over all the weebs and foreign tourists that clog up their country, and have long since passed their boiling point of ignoring it, and have crossed the line into physically acting out on their frustrations, by deliberately bumping tourists; but because most of these frustrated Japanese people are still massive pussies, they only do so to women, children and generally people smaller than themselves.

To a degree, I get it, I’m not even a Korean citizen, and I was getting repeatedly incensed by the massive swarms of mostly Chinese, Russian or Indonesian tourists I came across in Seoul, clogging up the place of my heritage.  I would’ve loved to have bodied some people, especially those of whom weren’t paying attention to their surroundings, but like I said, I’m slightly more civilized than the Japanese creeps who let their frustrations get the best of them.

So this Japanese bumper is going around, shoulder checking all sorts of, mostly women, almost all smaller than him, but in his reign of terror, he bumps the wrong girl, one who has a rather large hulking oppa with her, who does not appreciate what he has seen.  And I love how the video footage shows how he’s repeatedly taking a wide route around him, and taking some time to verify that his target is accurate, almost hunting him like a shark.

And when the time is right, he intercepts the bumper and meets him with a shoulder check of his own, before stopping him and getting up in his grill, flexing his massive size difference to the little pussy, with his bro offering absolutely no modicum of support or backup.

In typical meek Japanese pussy fashion, the bumper collapses like a house of cards to a confrontation from someone larger and more imposing than they were, checking smaller females left and right, and although I would doubt that getting verbalized and bodied by someone larger was going to cease his dickish behavior once the cameras stopped rolling and he was away from his confronter, but it was satisfying to watch, and absolutely undoubtedly would be me if I were to ever be in Japan, and I caught someone deliberately bumping my wife, that is if she didn’t get up their grill first.

Man, what I wouldn’t give to be in this guy’s shoes in this moment in time.  I’d love to physically and verbally de-pants some asshole for being an asshole.  Yes, tourists can be obnoxious, but there are just some lines you just can’t expect to cross without there being the possibility of retribution.

Get owned motherfucker.  Korea > Japan